


there's a crack in everything i hold close to my soul

by redgoldblue



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, Coda, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s10e14 I Ho'olulu Ho'ohulei 'ia E Ka Makani, Gen, again could be read as / or & which is why it's tagged as both, although I'm going along with canon's claim that they sleep in different bedrooms, contains strictly too many reflections on their relationship, h/c, in line with my ka i'o one only this time it's steve for danny, more or less
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27043780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redgoldblue/pseuds/redgoldblue
Summary: Danny refuses to break down after his mystery dream woman dies, but that doesn't mean he doesn't still need to be talked through it. Or just... to sit with it.Coda to 10x14 I Ho'olulu Ho'ohulei 'ia E Ka Makani - the things Danny doesn't say to Steve in the car outside the morgue at the start of 10x15.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett & Danny "Danno" Williams, Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 5
Kudos: 85





	there's a crack in everything i hold close to my soul

**Author's Note:**

> So I left writing this for too long after watching it and as said in the tags, it sort of devolved into me co-opting Steve's voice to meta about their relationship but uh... I figured y'all'd still be up for that. Set immediately prior to the start of 10x15, which I decided could reasonably only be a couple of days at most after 10x14.
> 
> Title is from American Roads by Noah Reid

Steve jogs up the stairs, headed for his post-morning-swim shower. Danny was still asleep when he went down to the beach, and Junior already up and leaving for breakfast with Tani and Nahele. He’s pretty sure they’ve decided to half-adopt Nahele, even though he’s only a couple of years younger than them. And already has a working parental figure, thank you very much – Steve, who is currently veering to the right at the top of the stairs, towards his bedroom to get clothes.

He pauses in the doorway, though, when he realises his room isn’t empty. Eddie and Danny are both lying on his bed next to each other, almost the same length with Eddie sprawled out and Danny curled up, knees to his chest. Danny’s still wearing his pyjamas – which consist of sweat shorts and, at the moment, old t-shirts that may _once_ have seen better days, but Steve thinks said better days were probably around the time Al Capone was active – and his hair, clean from last night’s shower, is flopping over his forehead in the way that he usually invests about $10k annually in hair gel to prevent.

Eddie’s been doing better since the neighbour took out the plant a couple of days ago, but Dr. Currin had told him to keep him on the anxiety meds for a week or so, and he’s still tired out from them. Steve takes it as a good sign, though, that he barely reacts to Steve walking into the room, other than his ears pricking up momentarily. Danny, on the other hand, lifts his head and blinks at Steve. Even though he knows he wasn’t asleep – his eyes were open, and besides, it takes him longer to get back to sleep than it takes Steve to have his morning swim – he still looks as if Steve has just woken him.

“Hi,” he croaks, still husky from sleep, and maybe, as the redness around his eyes suggests, from tears.

“Hey.” Steve dumps his towel by the door – it won’t kill either of them for it to sit there a few minutes – and continues walking over to the bed. He scratches Eddie’s head as Danny explains,

“Came in here to find you. But. So Eddie and I have been talking instead.”

“Intelligent conversation?” Steve asks.

“Definitely. You could learn a few things from your dog.”

“I’m sure I could.” Eddie whines softly when he lifts his hand off his head, so he puts it back and resumes scratching. He stays silent, waits for Danny to say or do whatever it was he came in for in the first place. Although he has his suspicions that maybe Danny didn’t even know what that was – more than once, since Danny moved in, Steve has found himself outside his bedroom door with no real purpose other than knowing that seeing Danny will make him feel better, so he’s prepared to believe that works the other way around as well.

Danny heaves a deep breath and rolls onto his back. He looks at Steve for a moment – Steve watches him, silently – then closes his eyes. Some conversations are easier had when you can’t see the person you’re having them with. “I didn’t even know her twenty-four hours, Steve,” he says.

Steve nods, even though Danny’s eyes are still closed. He wouldn’t put it past Danny to somehow feel the movement without seeing it. “Yeah, but you connected,” he replies softly. “And then she died in front of you. It’s not… Of course you’re grieving.”

Danny looks up at him, maintains eye contact for a few seconds before his gaze darts away again. “She reminded me of you, y’know that?”

Steve spreads his hands, jokes, “Well, of course you liked her, then.” When Danny doesn’t respond to that, Steve sighs and sits down on the bed. Clearly humour isn’t going to work this time. He scoots up the bed so his back is against the head, adjusting the pillow behind him. Danny’s head is laying next to his hip in this position, and it takes very little movement from Danny to shift across until his head is in Steve’s lap, Eddie stretched out between their bodies.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve offers. He knows that’s what he’d be beating himself up about if he were in Danny’s shoes.

“I know it wasn’t my fault,” Danny replies immediately, because they might share a few more traits than either would like to admit, but still, Danny isn’t Steve. “It’s the fault of the bastard who drove off and left us there.” He pauses, then continues, “I still can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t driven her home, or I’d taken a different route, or we’d stayed at the bar ten minutes longer…”

“Yeah.” Steve takes a long, slow breath, and runs his fingers through Danny’s hair. “It’s always harder when things don’t make sense.”

“Yeah,” Danny echoes. “That’s it. It was random. I don’t– I’ve lost people before. You know that. But it’s always been deliberate – there’s always been a reason, even if it’s just that they pissed the wrong person off, or swam too far out. It’s never just been… wrong place, wrong time. I don’t know why that’s harder, but it is.” He rolls his head slightly to look up at Steve. “Do you have anyone like that?” he asks, and Steve takes a moment to reflect on the absurdity of being barely 40 and having lost so many people that neither he nor the one person in the world most privy to his trauma can immediately recall them all.

He shrugs slowly at Danny. “In some ways, the military is all just… wrong place, wrong time. No-one dies because the person who killed them knew them, or had any reason to want them dead. People just die because other people set bombs or were shooting guns. It’s not exactly the same thing, but it’s… yeah, I get it.”

“Mmm,” Danny acknowledges, then falls silent again. Steve threads the fingers of his right hand through the strands of Danny’s hair that he’s holding and just rests his hand there, even as Eddie whines slightly grumpily and nudges his head up underneath Steve’s left hand. Steve laughs quietly and obeys the wordless command to resume patting him.

“Eddie’s getting jealous,” he informs Danny.

“That dog has no right to be jealous of anyone when it comes to you. I actually think if someone was holding a gun to your head and telling you to choose between me or him you’d pick him.”

“You can defend yourself better,” Steve points out. “And you’d figure out a way to take down the guy with the gun.”

“Yeah, sure, babe. I’m still not over you calling him your man, you know.”

“What, I can’t have two men?”

“Not when one of them’s canine.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Steve tells Eddie, who gives a quiet “roof!” in reply. “You know he loves you really.”

Danny harrumphs at that, but reaches down to scratch Eddie behind the ears anyway, fingers bumping against Steve’s. When they both reach for the same spot, Steve grabs his hand and holds it until Danny tilts his head up, pushing Steve’s other hand back, to look at him.

“You okay?” Steve asks.

“No,” Danny replies, quick but sincere. “But I will be.”

Steve nods and lets go of him, both his hand and his hair. It’s a conscious movement, a breaking of contact that doesn’t actually break anything, because they’re connected whether they’re touching or not, and Steve knows that Danny reads it the way Steve means him to because he smiles softly at him with that look in his eyes that’s somewhere between ‘I love you’ and ‘I know you’ and ‘I know I’m right’.

Danny drops his head back down onto Steve’s chest and says, “Can you get the world to not happen today?”

“Would if I could, Danno.”

Danny’s phone buzzes, and he groans, then reaches down to his pocket to grab it and holds it out to Steve. “Do I need to deal with it?” he asks, and Steve takes it and reads the text.

“It’s Noelani. They found her sister, she’s headed to the medical examiner’s office now.”

“Oh.” He pushes himself up into a sitting position, facing Steve side-on, and takes his phone back. “Thankyou.”

“I didn’t actually do anything,” Steve points out.

“You were here.”

Steve almost makes a smart-aleck comment about it being his bedroom they’re in, but changes his mind at the last moment. “Of course I am,” he says instead, deliberately switching the tense – him being there for Danny is not something that’s ever going to be of the past. “C’mon, I’ll drive you to the morgue.”

Turning away from Steve to stand up, Danny grumbles, “Love how you say that as if it’s an offer, not a demand.”

“You wanna drive?”

Danny squints at him. “Would you let me if I said yes?”

“Probably not. But it’s worth trying.”

“I actually don’t want to drive this morning, but I’m banking that for the future.”

“Nuh-uh,” Steve tells him. Eddie grumbles as Steve pushes himself up and he’s left alone on the bed, and Steve pats him in response. “That was a one-time-only trauma-mediated offer. You can’t save it up.”

“You’re just trying to create some sort of Pavlovian negative conditioning around driving for me, aren’t you? You already accomplished it with planes, so next you’re knocking out cars.”

“I didn’t _choose_ to get shot in the liver,” Steve points out. “And besides, I don’t think we’re in planes often enough for me to have bothered.”

“I notice you’re not denying the car one.”

Steve brushes a hand over Danny’s shoulders as he moves past him to collect his towel from the corner. “I’m gonna shower while you get dressed.”

Danny squints at him, fondness behind the suspicion, and drops the driving topic to move onto a different source of teasing. “You think you still retain the Navy shower skill? Last week you were in there for an hour.”

“Just because I choose not to doesn’t mean I can’t. Anyway, it takes you longer to do your hair than it does to take a proper Navy shower.”

Danny raises a finger like he’s about to make some damning point, then drops it when he realises he doesn’t have one. “Fine, go… briefly stand in the vicinity of the water or whatever it is you’re claiming to do.”

Steve grins at him. As he walks back past Danny to head out to the bathroom, Danny reaches out a hand, grabbing Steve’s wrist. When Steve looks back at him, he pauses for a moment, and Steve can see the words ticking over behind his eyes. Finally he repeats, “Thankyou. Really.”

Steve nods. “You’re welcome. I love you.”

Danny nods back, and drops his wrist. “Love you. Go shower before you freeze into a pillar of salt.”

“We’re resorting to biblical threats now?”

“Aw. It’s sweet of you to think that was a threat, babe,” Danny replies, and slips past Steve to the door. Just before he disappears around the corner, he turns around and blows Steve a kiss that’s half teasing, smug, follow-up to his words and half genuine, grateful, affection. Steve almost laughs out loud at how neatly that sums up their relationship, and then smiles to himself, because it’s proof that Danny was telling the truth, and that he will be okay. Even if this is masking, it’s not the dulled, bitter masking that Danny uses when he truly cannot see a way out. Steve hasn’t seen that for years, and what it doesn’t occur to him to think, as he picks up his towel and heads to the bathroom, is that maybe that’s because he, now, is always Danny’s way out.


End file.
